Our antique radio club in the Dallas area (VRPS - Vintage Radio and Phonograph Society http://www.vrps.org) has monthly events on the 3rd Saturday of every month, with many of these being meetings where presentations are given to members on various subjects that are usually radio related. I like to be involved with the club activities and so I volunteered to give a presentation early this year. Since I am an active member of Radio Museum, I put together a short presentation about how Radio Museum operates and also described features of the website that most radio collectors are not aware of. It is interesting to note that many Radio Museum members themselves are not aware of the various features that are available. Ernst Erb from Radio Museum was vacationing in the US starting last April and so arrangements were made to have Ernst be at the VRPS presentation. The presentation was well received at VRPS, and having Ernst there made the presentation even more interesting and special.

Tom Albrecht was kind enough to contact CHRS, and Steve Kushman arranged for a similar presentation to be given to the CHRS members 3 weeks later, again with Ernst present. The turnout was quite good, and it was my pleasure to see as few friends I had not seen in some time, including Tom Albrecht and Norm Leal. Thanks to Steve and the rest of the CHRS members who attended the presentation and gave us a tour of the KRE building!

I have posted the presentation below, as it contains information for both Radio Museum members and non-members alike. There are 27 slides, with the first 15 slides describing how the site operates and the remaining slides describing the features on the website.

John, that is a wonderful presentation!

If I'm interpreting this correctly, a member can maintain a full database of his/her own collection?
A private inventory with notes and information about each radio?

I feel bad that I have not been contributing much lately. I see so many amazing photographs taken by other people of their radios. I then look at my pathetic dim fuzzy images and feel they aren't truly worthy.

I'm trying to figure out and learn what i need to do to take better sharper detailed photos. My camera is a Canon EOS Rebel XT, which is a pretty good camera if I'm not mistaken. It should be able to take better photos.

-Steve

John, that's a great presentation! Thanks for posting it. It certainly covers a couple features of RadioMuseum that I hadn't noticed yet, like the Museum Finder. And of course, as soon as I tried looking up the one new museum I know about in my area, it wasn't on the list yet. So I already submitted an addition request.


Steve, it's all about the light. Anytime you're photographing inside, pictures tend to be blurry because there's not enough light. But when you try to use a flash, and the pictures are harsh and have terrible shadows.

Two solutions: First, try photographing outside in open shade. This should provide plenty of nice flat light to give good results. You may have to select a "Shade" or "Cloudy" color balance to get things to look right. Second, if working indoors, try using bounce flash. This usually takes a somewhat higher-power flash unit than the average point-n-shoot has, so expect to be mounting one of those big flash units in the hot shoe of your camera. Point the flash at the ceiling. It works best in a room with low ceilings (eg modern 7' 9" ceilings) that are painted white.

Rodney

Also a tripod helps a lot. The older I get the harder it is to hold the camera steady and that will make your pictures turn out blurry. If you don't have a tripod you can rest the camera on a solid surface and that will help.

Thanks Rodney, and yes, I was planning on purchasing a better flash for my camera.
I've tried different lighting as well, such as multiple halogen lights pointing at the ceiling to help disperse the light so its not direct.

Problem is, halogen lamps make the image WAY off color! To the point extensive Photoshop correction is needed., which I find almost impossible to get right.

I try to take photos outdoors when possible, problem is, I get a very crappy background as I live in the country and keeping things perfect as far as grass and weeds is not my forte. I have thought of building an outdoor photo studio, but then again, that costs $$

A guy I know who is into photography uses 4-6 slave flash units which fire into white umbrellas. I don't know what those run, but I can't believe they are cheap.

Steven, yes, I do use a tripod when I'm trying to get good photos. Again, its nothing expensive, just something i had leftover from my old 1980s camcorder.

I'm not the best photographer, but I'm trying to learn and buy what I need when possible.

-Steve

Good presentation. Well done.

On a lot of digital cameras a remote can be got. It also helps to keep from bouncing the camera when photos are taken.

Gentlemen, thanks for the feedback. For the folks who are RM members, my goal was to make you aware of some of the features in the Radio Museum website that most don't realize are there.

My impression is that most people know you can show off your radio collection by creating a Radio Collection page and then by posting pictures of your radio and test equipment collection there, others can see your collection. It is a very nice feature for folks like myself who do not have their own website. If you upload multiple pictures of a particular radio, you can then select which one goes into your radio collection page. You can also make your collection either open to the public or private.

Most people do not know that you can keep a detailed record of your radio collection using the website. Slide #23 shows a typical page where you can input data about a particular radio in your collection, such as pricing information, restoration status, location, etc. I know some collectors have hundreds of radios in various rooms and even in storage, so this feature could help them keep track of what is where.

One very interesting feature is on the tube pages. At the bottom of each tube page, you get a list of the number of radio models that use that particular tube, organized by year. If you then click on a year, you get a list of all the models in that year used that particular tube.

The fully detailed model finder is another great feature. You can not only type in the tube lineup, but you can also input any other information that you might have. Or you can search in certain literature, like Riders. This search feature works for all models in the RM database and covers radios world-wide, not just USA models.

John, this I did not know, and I've been a member for a few years now. Thanks for the great set of slides.

Another feature I use, after being told it existed: if you type "logos" into the search box you'll get hundreds of them, organized alphabetically. Great for identifying strange components.

That's TERRIFFIC.

I got recently drafted by a consortium of Northern California vintage electronics groups - (classic radios phonos jukeboxes, arcade games, talking machines/gramophones etc etc etc) only a consortium because no ONE single group had enough members or interest to continue on its' own (like other mens' hobbies i.e. trains from the 50's or toys or books and records or sports memorabilia dadadadadada), to do the same thing.

But the only turnout were all these cotton-topped elderly engineer guys who could barely see or hear - that I suspect had been temporarily abducted from the local Soldiers and Sailors Homes so that the staff there could get a few hours of peace and quiet from all the TVs and radios blasting over one another to a deafening level - and the incessant whining and complaining ``never good enough'' attitudes these guys get in their later years.

After an hour of crabby old men incessantly yelling WHAAAT?!?!? WHAAATTT!?!?!?!? over and over even though dead people on Mars could hear us over the PA - we gave up on the presentation and just placed all the gear out on the tables and let the guys fondle `em for the next three hours and mumble whatever unintelligible memories they were recollecting about the pieces - called the vans when it was over and had them all dropped back off at their center.

I told `em next time they can do it themselves - and I guarantee nobody else will - and the Activity Calendar will become mysteriously cleared for the forseeable future. So enjoy it while you can,

John,
This was an excellent presentation. I have been a member for a few years. I have posted a bunch of pictures and went there whenever I needed a schematic that I could not find or did find that was unreadable. I was unaware of the many additional features of the museum until your presentation. It is also good to know that you earn points by simply providing pricing information for what you purchased your radios for. Also knowing that people can earn points by simply recording what radios have sold for on EBay is great for people who think that they have nothing that they can contribute to be able to use the full functionality of the site without paying.
I really appreciate that you were able to present this to VRPS. In addition, having Ernst there was great. I was finally able to meet the man that had this dream and was helping collectors put together all this information before it is gone. He seems to be doing this for the love of the technology and preserving it for future generations. It is also good to know that he set up a foundation to keep this going after he is gone.

John,
I can see why you have been buying so much literature at our auctions and swap meets now. I was starting to get concerned about you.